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Thursday, 22 March 2018

Cambridge Analytica and the Romanian election

My friend Rupert Wolf-Murray has made the headlines in Romania by telling Associated Press that Cambridge Analytica approached him before Romania’s 2016 parliamentary elections to work for the Social Democratic Party (PSD).

He would have worked with another person and given strategic advice and assistance to the PSD campaign team for two or three months. Here Rupert is talking about it on television.

He declined the offer so does not know whether Cambridge Analytica did play any role in the election, which the PSD won by a wide margin.

Cambridge Analytica came under the spotlight yesterday for ("illegally") obtaining and using the private data of about 50 million Facebook users.

Several issues are important.

One is that Cambridge Analytica was able to harvest the data not only of Facebook users who answered a questionnaire in good faith but also the data of all the respondents' Facebook friends.

Second is that, whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, this is how Facebook makes money. Facebook users are the product. Facebook sells us.

Thirdly, Facebook provides data to advertisers for commercial purposes, as a rule, but there is no reason why this data should not be used for political purposes as much as to sell shampoo.

Fourthly, apart from all the considerations about privacy law, the fact remains that if we value privacy we should not use social media or answer online questions. We should definitely not write blogs, or take controversial positions in them.

Finally, the real reason why Cambridge Analytica is causing outrage is twofold. One aspect is that mainstream journalists hate the modern media, which are cutting them out of their jobs, and yearn to damage Facebook. Second, people who are horrified that Donald Trump is President of the U.S.A. need to find some occult reason why it is so.

Russian interference was one reason. Manipulation of data is another.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many people are still at the denial stage - not denying that Trump is President, of course, but denying that he is President because he appealed to enough Americans to win.

One final point. The man from Cambridge Analytica said to Megan Kelly that they told the whole Trump campaign team on the Saturday before the election that victory was certain. This blows apart the key thesis in Michael Wolff's book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, that none of the people around Trump expected to or wanted to win, including the candidate, with the one exception of Steve Bannon.

21 comments:

You can watch the interview that Zuckerberg gave CNN to clarify the issues.

So, FB allows third-party apps on its platform. They are supposed to check that they are safe. They missed the coding in this phishing app (and other similar ones) leading to massive data breaches. When they found out, in 2014, they stopped them and asked the app developers and all companies which had stolen data in their possession to certify that they deleted it or face legal consequences. They complied with the FB request. Obviously there was no way to check, it's too easy to copy and hide some data.

FB did not report the data breach to investors (which they are required to do as they are with all events which can influence stock value). They did not report it to authorities.

This is not a case in which FB sold more or less aggregate and anonymized data to advertisers as they normally do (and according to some fine print in the user agreement with the platform) - FB actually did not sell anything, the user data was taken from FB without its permission or the permission of the users - most did not even take the quiz, but one of their friends did.

Now FB will be facing some class action lawsuits from investors for failing to report the breach - and the users, for being negligent with their data. It will cost them billions but they will survive as they have hundreds of millions of people hooked.

Also, it's not just having the data - there are more ingredients or the LibDems, who were the original clients for CA, would not have done so poorly.

We had some change-prone times, with high discontent in pockets of the population and with fairly talented change candidates.

We also had some state actors like Russia experimenting with campaign interference in favor of the disruption candidates, which somehow, by some magical coincidence, all happened to be pro-Russian (Farage, Le Pen, Trump, AfD).

It's the new kind of warfare, which seems much better and cleaner than the old one.

The outrage here is not that CA used the FB data; it has been long known that FB data is being used in political campaigns: https://hackernoon.com/cambridge-analytica-what-the-media-wont-tell-you-772d7ec80e4. Apparently the same technique was heavily used in the 2012 election.The outrage is that this time, despite FB's and Google's efforts the election went sideways. And of course the big bad capitalists should pay.This whole story points to the fact that the masses have evolved beyond current marketing techniques. New ones a forthcoming.Ultimately, what did CA do to help Trump win: very little. If anything, it was a very good polling tool.

"The fact of the matter is the data that Cambridge Analytica acquired from Facebook, much of which they obtained legally and as Facebook intended them to, was entirely useless without machine learning. Machine learning is one of the baby steps required for building artificial intelligence, it is a field of computer science that gives computer systems the ability to “learn” with data without being programmed by a person. It was this technology that Cambridge Analytica used to analyze tens of millions of users profiles using data they acquired from Facebook, and put together psychological profiles of users. They then used Facebook’s targeted advertising system to display ads and content at those users geared towards their own psychological profile. Think of it as persuasive arguing on steroids hyper targeted by your own beliefs about the world."

Ah the buzzword of today: machine learning. It does exist and it is frightening, but what CA seems to have done is not machine learning; it is rather data mining superimposed on psychological profiling. Machine learning would have needed a lot of information on voting and party registration outcome, to learn what works on what type of physiological type and then plan the next persuasive move. I still have a hard time believing that this made a difference in outcome. We are not as prone to ads as they think, and presenting an anti H ad to an independent voter is not going to guarantee that he/she will be swayed, unless there is some reality to reinforce the message. All CA could do is send ads and annoying phone calls.Even the 2008 and 2012 election; ultimately it was about the Iraq war disaster not about Obama and his campaign .

"The reason Hillary Clinton did not win despite the media and social media companies doing everything they could to rig the election in her favor is because Facebook double dipped and allowed Cambridge Analytica to use their surveying tools to collect user data on tens of millions of users. This data was then used to target tens of millions of users with political advertising using Facebook’s ad platform based on psycholgoical profiles from data they bought or acquired from Facebook."

"The reason Hillary Clinton did not win despite the media and social media companies doing everything they could to rig the election in her favor is because Facebook double dipped and allowed Cambridge Analytica to use their surveying tools to collect user data on tens of millions of users. This data was then used to target tens of millions of users with political advertising using Facebook’s ad platform based on psycholgoical profiles from data they bought or acquired from Facebook."

Wolfe-Murray's twitter feed:"But the really great thing about Nazis is: they always lose. (re Trump)Why in Britain committing economic suicide?The Brexit catastrophe is only just beginning,Do not vote for Theresa May. Do not vote against the NHS, the police, human rights, foxes, school meals, pensioners, and the mentally ill.Brexit Means ChaosNot gonna happen: Big Business need conservatives to protect their dirty businesses...Remember, it is not just Muslims and Hispanics that Conservatives fear and hate - they fear and hate everyone."

And now Wolfe-M is seeking 10 minutes of fame as an erstwhile Facebook stooge!

This is very interesting. It's also quite funny and I have a smile on my face as I write this. I was wondering when the hate mail would come.

Someone has spent a lot of time going through my Twitter feed, where I have made over 16,000 tweets since 2009. If this is all they can come up with then I'm on safe ground.

I'm not denying I made those comments, some of which make sense, as I don't remember every tweet, but they look suspect; some look like they are by me, others look like retweets and some look entirely made up. I think that's how these anonymous trolls operate. There's also a spelling mistake which is telling.

I've been told I'm too free with my opinions on social networks but I disagree. You're welcome to trawl through and find compromising material but so what? I've got nothing to be ashamed of and I'm not perfect.

The implication here is that I'm not a conservative and that is in fact true. But I do believe in the founding values of conservatism from the 1820s; it was a movement to conserve the traditional way of life. Now that is something I believe in; if we all went back to living as they did in Romanian villages when I first lived in Romania (in a village, from 90-92) the world would be in a better place.

In fact, my view of politicians in general is very open minded; I want to believe what they promise and judge them by their actions. Theresa May promised social justice and Trump promised to pull America out of the global trading system. Neither have delivered and both have proven that their parties are in hock to big business; the fact that they can't get big business to pay tax is definitive proof of that.

Can the socialists do any better? Their record would suggest not. But I believe in the founding values of socialism (also from the 1820s) but they also seem unable to deliver on their promises.

To Mr or Mrs Anonymous; if you're still digging through my Twitter feed, good luck with it and do share any other gems you find.

I am pleased to hear that you didn't know you opposed hunting. I am sure you don't think Donald Trump is a Nazi. I am a conservative because I want to conserve traditional culture and way of life and in every country want to preserve the values of the countryside. Urban liberals in the U.S.A. fear and hate rural America, but I hope this feeling is not echoed in Europe or in our blessed isle.Tradition and freedom are what matter most to me - after, of course, my country. Do you feel the same?

Actually I don't think the anonymous comment can be called 'hate mail'. Mild dislike rather than hate. Genuine hatred is one of the most terrible of sins but the word is so misused these days that I wish we could abolish it, along with several other pesky words.

You have barely even set foot in America. Urban liberals value rural authenticity and resourcefulness. They can handle a lot of different people, including rural ones. It's the Breitbart crowd ( whose readership is dramatically dropping) that screams and cries all the time about being looked down upon and persecuted by liberals. The same way the Brexit crowd does, except by delivering a big disruption they had no idea how to implement, the Brexit gang actually deserves some of the opprobrium sent its way. It's been a year and a half people... figure it out and make it work!

You have barely even set foot in America. Urban liberals value rural authenticity and resourcefulness. They can handle a lot of different people, including rural ones. It's the Breitbart crowd ( whose readership is dramatically dropping) that screams and cries all the time about being looked down upon and persecuted by liberals. The same way the Brexit crowd does, except by delivering a big disruption they had no idea how to implement, the Brexit gang actually deserves some of the opprobrium sent its way. It's been a year and a half people... figure it out and make it work!

You're right that people who post their intimate thoughts, grievances, and (about 90% of the time, it seems) self-aggrandizing updates on Facebook have not reason to be shocked when the info is used by marketers (or governments).

I hate advertising. I value choice, and advertising eliminates choice. I say "eliminates" because this is how powerful the technology is. (Screw the energy crisis, or environmental decline. Our best minds are hard at work ensuring that THIS soap powder is chosen over THAT one.) When a group of 100 people are shown a video, and the producers can predict that 95 of them will choose differently from the control group in a subsequent questionnaire (do you prefer THIS soft drink / car / candidate, or THAT one?), then we can say that "coercion" has happened. If there's money in that change, then there's money behind the science. Conspiracy theorists say that choice is a delusion; they're right, but they wrongly put the blame on the Illuminati, George Soros, etc. Mad Men choose the president, and lots of more important things.